


Ghosted

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe, Government Experimentation, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4333140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looked at him with frightened eyes.  "People came.  Just after Bowman and me got married.  They said he was dead.  Gave Bo a big old American flag and everything."</p>
<p>"There's no record of that happening, Ava."</p>
<p>"I ain't surprised.  But you--you should leave it alone, Raylan."</p>
<p>Raylan sipped at his coffee.  "Tell me something I don't know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosted

**Author's Note:**

> In the interested of having at least most of my Justified output here on the archive, this is a thing I wrote about a year ago and thought wasn't finished. I reread it recently and decided there really is an ending.
> 
> It's basically, what if Boyd Crowder was the Winter Soldier to Raylan's Captain America.

Raylan’s arrival in Kentucky from Miami was uneventful. He got in, got the motel, shoved his bag in the closet and went to sleep. The next day, he met everybody. Things were quiet.

He asked Tim, the veteran, if he wanted to get lunch.

“Can’t this minute,” he said. “I’m gonna go interview this woman from down in Harlan. Shot her husband. We think her father-in-law might reach out from prison, try and get someone to take her down.”

Raylan went a little cold. “What’s the name?”

“Oh, right. You’re from there. Crowder.”

“Who was the husband?” That cold is creeping up and Raylan was only thinking of Boyd.

“Crowder, I said,” Tim answered, distracted by whatever papers he had to get together.

“There’s two of them,” Raylan said, a bit strangled.

“Oh, Bowman. That’s the deceased.”

Raylan nearly hit him. 

“You knew him?”

“Not as well as his brother.”

Tim frowned. “There’s a brother?”

“‘Less he’s dead, too.” Raylan wouldn’t know, he’d let it lie, like they’d decided.

Tim threw open a folder, still frowning. “There’s no record. Alive or dead.”

Raylan blinked. “No, his name is Boyd. We-we weren’t friends.” It was a canned lie. Something they’d told each other too. “We dug coal together, when we were nineteen. Me and Boyd Crowder.”

“He’s not here, Raylan. Not in this file,” Tim insisted, sliding it across the desk to him. “Listen, I got to go. Give me twenty minutes and we can still get lunch.”

“Sure,” Raylan said to the file. He scanned it, then read it, then read it again.

There was no record that there was or ever had been a man living named Boyd Crowder.

 

“What’s this I hear you asking for files from the FBI, CIA, and Army Intelligence?” Art asked him a few days later. “I must really be getting old. Did I put you on a case and forget about it, Raylan?”

It didn’t matter anyway because all of those organizations had told him there was no file on a Boyd Crowder, born in Harlan, Kentucky in 1970. No man such as that had ever been on any government organization’s radar, let alone been a private in the U.S. Army, as Raylan had heard from Helen.

“I had some favors to call in, Art,” Raylan said, knowing exactly what his boss was worried about. “Never used your name to get it.”

“That’s good, Raylan, but I actually want to know what you’re looking into, here.”

Raylan sighed. “You ever hear Bo Crowder had another son?”

“Nope,” Art said. “He get out?”

“According to every file I’ve dug up, Art, he never existed. He wasn’t in the file on Bowman, so I did some digging. It’s crazy. I _know_ him. I dug coal with him before he shipped out of there.”

“To the Army?”

“So I heard.”

“Maybe he lied about it,” Art shrugged. “Maybe he skipped town. Wouldn’t be intelligence records on him if he never did anything, changed his name or something.”

“The hospital records are gone too,” Raylan tilted his head up to look Art right in the eyes.

“Shit gets misfiled all the time, especially in backwoods places like that.” Art hesitated, then forged on, “Raylan, if I were you, and even if I weren’t, I’d drop this right now, because I’m telling you to. If you’re thinking what I’m pretty sure you’re thinking--and I am in no way saying I think that’s what’s happening here-- this isn’t something you want to even look like you’re looking into. Drop it right now.” Art sounded like he was talking to a dog that got his mouth around his master’s slipper. 

Raylan bristled, but nodded.

“Tell yourself this boy’s dead, died a long time ago, and move the fuck on. Don’t mess around, all right?”

And Raylan didn’t. He knew when a lead had gone cold and Boyd’s was colder than he’d ever encountered, had ever heard of. He swallowed something sharp in his throat, mostly in the mornings when he’d wake up from dreaming the mine, and he let it lie.

That’s what they’d agreed on.

 

“I’m telling you,” Tim said to Rachel as he passed the bottle of Booker’s to her. He’d come in late to their bi-weekly get together in the conference room after hours. “Places like the ones ‘round here,” he looked at Raylan, “like where _he’s_ from. That’s where they got those kids.”

“What kids?” Raylan isn’t even thinking about Boyd.

“The ghosts,” Tim said.

“Ooohhhh,” Rachel laughed, pouring another two fingers in her glass.

“It’s no joke,” he defended. “They took these enlisted kids, asked ‘em right out of boot camp, ‘you ever kill anybody before?’ and the ones that say yes, that fit the profile, they ghost ‘em. Put ‘em in the program and they never fucking come out.”

Rachel wasn’t laughing anymore, but she looked a little angry, uncertain. “What the hell are you talking about?”

But Tim just shook his head and looked at Raylan. Raylan didn’t think he’d said anything, but there might have been a look on his face.

“N-never mind,” Tim mumbled. He drew his palm across his eyes. “Just an urban legend.” He smirked. “If it was true,” he said, looking straight at Raylan. “They’d get those kids from places like Harlan.”

After Rachel left, Raylan was staring into his glass when Tim said, “They asked me and I said no. If you fit the profile, they ask you when you can’t lie about it. I hear they don’t _ask_ you anything again after that.”

Raylan looked at him then. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Tim shrugged. “Nothing. Just thought you might want to know. It’s better than not having any idea, right?” 

Raylan showed his teeth. “Something’s always better than nothing,” he said.

“You can’t look for these people, Raylan. They’re ghosts. They surface and disappear. They literally are nothing to nobody, except who they’re working for. I met one once, in the shit. I think he was anyway. He went out _by himself_ in the middle of the goddamn desert, came back three days later with something round and bloody in a bag. I shit you not. Don’t make me regret I told you.”

Raylan sighed. “What the hell am I gonna do, Tim? Relax.” He didn’t say thank you.

 

Tim's story was the only reason Raylan asked Ava about it. He'd let it lie, to heal closed, and now it was torn open again.

He saw her from time to time when he went down to Harlan. He'd slept with her once, and it was the next morning he asked her, "You ever hear from Boyd?"

She looked at him with frightened eyes. "People came. Just after Bowman and me got married. They said he was dead. Gave Bo a big old American flag and everything."

"There’s no record of that happening, Ava."

"I ain't surprised. But you--you should leave it alone, Raylan."

Raylan sipped at his coffee. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He comes back here sometimes," she blurted. "Oh God, Raylan, don't tell anyone I told you that."

"What do you mean?"

She got up from the table suddenly and he followed her, catching her arm by the fridge and shaking her hard right up into it. "I shouldn't have--"

"You did. Tell me, goddamn it."

She looked up at him. "It might not even be him. I dunno, just, sometimes I see a man, out in town, once I saw him hitching down the road and he looked so much like Boyd, I just kept right on driving."

"He going anywhere specific?"

"No, he just...he's always walking, always looking around, but not like--" She didn't seem to know what she meant to say.

"Not like what?" Raylan didn't get it. If he was what Tim thought, what Art thought, why would they send him home? If he wasn't, why wouldn't he have just come back for good?

"Not like it was any place he recognized. Not like it was...home."

"You never told anybody?"

She pushed him off. "He's supposed to be dead, Raylan. If he went AWOL instead, I wasn't gonna snitch on him. Bo would have hunted him down himself."

Raylan drew a sweaty hand across his mouth. Ava didn't know how much of a ghost Boyd really was. He was going to make certain she stayed in the dark. "Don't tell anybody else. Even if they ask you like I just did."

She nodded, eyes wide.

"Boyd is dead. Anybody else you saw just had the Crowder look, right?"

"Yeah," she told him. "That's what I always said before."

 

A few months later, he was in Harlan looking for Dewey Crowe, who may or may not have had his kidney's removed in a hotel room. There, he saw Boyd Crowder.

He looked--almost small. Thin and wiry. His eyes were large and dull under a dirty baseball cap. He had his hands in his pockets. He was walking down the hill to Audrey's.

Raylan turned fast up the road and parked his car in the middle of it. He got out and leaned against the driver's side door. He stared at Boyd and Boyd stared at him.

There was no mistaking him. He didn't look exactly the same, certainly older, worn, tired, but he looked enough like the boy Raylan knew.

He didn't look like he knew Raylan, though. Raylan kept waiting for that smile, all teeth, to erupt across his face. He kept waiting for him to say, “Hello, Raylan."

He took no further step forward, but he didn't appear threatened either. Not by Raylan's badge or gun.

"I don't think they ever sent civilian police as my tail," he said. There was almost no Kentucky in his voice.

Raylan crossed his arms. "You don't think?"

Boyd smiled and it was terrifying. "Things get a little murky sometimes, all the shit they want me to forget. But they tell me the drill. I wouldn't think this mission was my first rodeo. Not with these wrinkles."

Raylan tilted his head. There he was. Raylan smiled too, like he used to, down in the black. "How much do you remember?" he asked.

Boyd took a step back. He reached, lightening quick, quicker than Raylan ever was, into nowhere and produced a small firearm. He held it like his own hand. He said, "If you ai-aren't my tail you better get the fuck out of here."

He stepped forward then, not running, but moving fast, and Raylan didn't even think to draw his own weapon. "Okay, Boyd," he said calmly.

 

Boyd's eyes went black then, his pupils expanding like a blown up balloon in the dark brown of his irises. Raylan was close enough to see this happening because Boyd was still approaching him. Boyd caught Raylan, excruciatingly hard, at his neck and pressed him against his car, pressed the barrel of his gun into Raylan's temple.

Even without the gun in the equation, Raylan could not have broken Boyd's grip, could not have got himself out of the hold. He was not a hand to hand fighter, he never had been, really. He could be vicious when cornered, but he could tell Boyd was way above his skill level. Boyd would snap his neck before he let him go.

"Who the fuck is Boyd?" He spoke slowly and clearly.

Raylan didn't answer.

 

"You know me?" he demanded. "You know me by a name?" He thrust the barrel even harder under Raylan's chin. "Answer me."

 

"Boyd Crowder," Raylan choked. "You're from here. W-we used to drink together. Just up the road."

 

Boyd pulled back. His pupils were now pinpricks. He seemed to be listening for something. He blinked twice then seemed to see Raylan again. He yanked open the car door, raised the gun again, and growled, "Drive."

 

He is a ghost.

He is a ghost. They call him The Mouth. He doesn't use his much, that he can tell. He doesn't think they know why they call him that either. He gets the impression it was a long time ago he got the name.

He's handled by boys and when he looks in the mirror he sees an old man. He supposes they'll use him until he dies. He can't remember how many times they've done this. He wonders if it's always looked so shoddy, so back alley and dark.

He doesn't think of escape. He wonders, however they made him, if they put that into him. 

He thinks about the man in the hat. He knew the whites of his eyes, his teeth. Everything else about him could have been a blank, a dark veil of heat and nothing, and he would have known.

_I know you_.

He knew a name.

 

_Boyd Crowder_.

"Where did you hear that?" One of the boys asks him.

He opens his eyes. He's on the table now. The room doesn't matter. There is always a table, he thinks. After a while, the patterns stick with him. Always a table. Always a light, a bright one, blink blink blinking. 

He watches it. 

He loosens. 

The man in the hat. The whites of his eyes. A split lip. A bloody bruise. Something cool on his tongue. A boiling in his belly.

"It doesn't matter," another one says. "He's wiped."

There is always a needle, sharp and cool. And then darkness.

 

"We could have used you back in Lexington on that Crowe thing," Art told him.

Raylan walked into Art's office and shut the door.

"What?" Raylan knew that Art could tell by his expression something serious was happening.

 

"I saw him. Boyd Crowder," Raylan said.

"Shit."

 

"He shoved a gun in my face, Art. He didn't know his own name." Raylan sat down heavily in one of Art's chairs. He'd been playing it over and over again in his head, on the way back to Lexington.

He thought of things he hadn't even been able to notice in the moment. Boyd's bloodshot eyes. The sour smell of an unwashed body. He must have been days off the grid. He was carrying one bag. His clothes were filthy. Raylan wondered where he slept.

 

"He thought I was a tail of some kind. He didn't like it that I wasn't."

"Stop talking," Art said. He'd picked up his phone.

Raylan frowned. "Who are you calling?"

"And old friend. He's out of the game now, but he'll know at least something about this. I'm gonna get him to put you off it. 'Cause I have been apparently unable to."

"I wasn't looking for him, Art." Raylan ground his teeth together. He felt an old rage at the back of his eyes. He'd followed the rules. He still got in trouble. "Shit."

 

"Well, you talked to him, Raylan," Art was yelling now. "With all you know that was a goddamn stupid thing to do. Now--Hey, Fred. Long time, huh?"

Raylan was waved out of the office as Art got into talking to his mysterious friend.

 

A week later, Raylan was having lunch with a man about Art's age, but harder looking, tall and lean. His eyes said he'd seen some shit.

"It won't matter if he's seen you, whatever happened when he did. If they picked him back up, and they most certainly did, he's been wiped and that memory's not coming back." The man, Fred Atwood, said these words as if they were obvious.

Raylan stared at him.

"Look, I don't condone this, son. I worked in the program in its infancy. When this shit was going down, I made my opinion clear and I got the fuck out. I don't remember a boy named Crowder, but there were a lot of boys like him, all right?"

"How fucking many?" Raylan asked.

"You're only worried about the one, anyway, aren't you?"

"Fuck off," Raylan snarled.

"The program started big, but now they know what sort of candidates work best. They're harder to find, more selective. Maybe there's a new one every few years. That kind of work is in lower demand anyway, and training needs to be more intensive." Fred's eyes were clear, if not completely honest. He was giving Raylan more information than he asked for.

"What kind of work?"

"The wet kind, son."

Raylan wasn't surprised. "Why come here and talk to me at all?"

"Art asked me to. Look, I know he wants me to come here and tell you not to pursue this, but really, I think that you should.” There was a serious set to Fred’s shoulders. He hadn’t touched the food the waitress had just brought over. Raylan wasn’t feeling particularly hungry right then either.

“You do?”

Fred’s mouth tightened. “Yes. I think your friend is actually in trouble here. He’s about the same age as you, right?”

“Couple months younger,” Raylan said. His voice felt dry and scratchy. He swallowed. “What kind of trouble?”

“At his age, he should be out. Done, Raylan. But he’s working, clearly.” Fred sighed. “I think instead of retiring him, someone sold him in a contract, probably along with a bunch of other shit labelled surplus in a spreadsheet. He’s got a number and a code name. No one outside the program would have known he was a man.”

“Jesus Christ, Fred,” Raylan hissed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Fred laid it out in a flat, almost defensively unemotional tone. “Some independent security agency or some mafioso is running him. Who knows how many times he’s changed hands. Eventually, they’re going to fuck up procedure and break him, and he’ll either rampage or he’ll go catatonic, either way, he’ll be dead at the end of it.”

Raylan leaned back in his chair. "What the hell did you do to these people?"

"A bunch of really horrible shit, son. Shit you don't want to know and he won't remember, so forget about it. What you have to do now, is find him and get him out."

"How?"

Fred leaned forward. "You saw him in your hometown, right? And he was expecting a tail. They're following the early model. They must have somebody who was a technician from way back running him. They don't just set him loose and then reel him in when he's done. They let him go where he wants to for a little. The idea is that the more slack you give, the less fight there will be. You let them move, let them make the calls until they can't anymore, until they lose any desire or even capacity to do so."

"What do you mean capacity?"

"He's got no past. He goes home because maybe it feels right, or the name's stuck in his head, who the hell knows. But once he gets there, he doesn't have the memories to make it mean anything. Everything is done for him. He makes no decisions outside the parameters of a mission. He has no life outside his job. He goes home, he sees people, he sees no place for himself and he has no goddamn idea how to make one." Fred shakes his head. "They wouldn't let him even if he tried."

Raylan suddenly thought of Boyd out under the Kentucky sky with him, in the shadow of the mountain, looking up at the stars from the back of his Chevy. He heard him saying, "How could you ever leave, Raylan? It's fucking _home_."

Raylan jutted his jaw, knowing Fred was watching him deal with this, comprehend the full weight of what had been done to Boyd.

He thought, if they hadn't let it go so long, if home hadn't turned into something even Boyd couldn't stomach anymore, all those memories, all those times--this wasn't Raylan's fault, not at all really. But he felt the mountain's weight of guilt regardless.

"What do I need to do to get him out?" Raylan asked.

Fred shrugged, not like it was nothing, but like it was obvious. "You wait for a murder, a real efficient one, mysterious too, no suspects, to hit. Then you wait for him in Harlan."

"And after that?"

"Shit, son," Fred laughed bitterly. "I have no fucking idea."

 

Six weeks later, there was a hit in Detroit. Raylan had put a lot of feelers out there, calling in favors, asking for calls. He got one early in the morning, before Art had come in. It was a messy affair, three dead, made to look like a lover's quarrel, but Raylan's contact said the shots were too efficient, too professional.

Raylan got off the phone and turned to Tim, who had just come in. "I need your help," he said directly.

Tim's mouth fell open. "I thought you were dropping that."

"Art's friend seemed to think I shouldn't. I'm inclined to agree."

"Raylan, these people--"

"It's not them, Tim. They _sold_ him. He should be out and he's not." He looked hard at the kid. He wouldn't say there was a parallel here. It wasn't his place. He'd never served. "I really need your help."

Tim groaned and picked up his keys. "Where are we going?"

"Harlan."

 

They took separate cars down and met up at a diner just outside the town.

"So where's he going to be?" Tim asked. "Not here, I'm assuming."

Raylan grimaced. "Probably not. They let him loose after his mission's over, let him do what he wants."

Something pained crossed Tim's face. "Shit. And he comes home?"

"Mostly, it seems like." Raylan hesitated, but knew he needed to lay things out for Tim. "You should know we were, uh, involved...when we were younger. I just...didn't want you to be surprised by anything I might say to him."

Tim's jaw twitched. "Wasn't sure. But I can't say I'm too surprised. Sorry, man. About what happened to him."

Raylan turned away. "Not as sorry as I am."

 

Harlan, Kentucky is a place where he goes.

He was in Detroit before, far from where he is now. They told him he could go. Anywhere you want, they said. He didn't think about going. He goes to Harlan.

When he reaches Harlan, he thinks about why. He tries to. There's nothing.

There's hills and valleys, green things. There's people, old and young, their voices smooth and long. They sound real. There's buildings, businesses, run down. He sees these things and he's outside of them. There's nothing for him here.

He knows they want him to get lost. Stop walking. Wait.

But he doesn't. They are the ones who will wait. He's not done yet.

He knows the pattern, they told him and he remembers it--no, he feels it. It's not the same as remembering. He knows nothing else under this sun, in these hills and he's not done being him yet. He's not done with this life.

He walks along the road, up a low sloping hill. The sun is in his eyes. It's midday and warm. The wind is high and blows over the hills, not through the hollers. He slows. A car comes at him from around the bend. It's a black one, smooth and wide, dusted from back roads. It stops suddenly. There is a man driving. He's in his forties, tall, packing. He wears a hat. 

He sees the whites of the driver's eyes.

He stands perfectly still.

Another vehicle pulls up the hill, blocking the road. Another driver packing. A younger man. Sniper. His lip curls.

The second driver gets out of his car before the first does. "Call it, Raylan," he says.

He looks at the man in the hat. That man. That is Raylan.

"Boyd," he says. Raylan.

He tilts his head. He thinks of a dark place and doesn't know why.

"Boyd, I remember one time you was walking up to my house 'cause your daddy wouldn't let you take the truck. I guess you made him mad or something, you never said. But I didn't want you to come up, because Arlo was home, so I waited in Helen's truck 'cause she let me borrow it and I waited until I heard you walking up the hill and I turned it right on and came speeding down round that bend and I just...wanted to tell you because us coming up on you like this made me think of it."

He doesn't seem to be a man of so many words, this Raylan. Most of them blow past him, this Raylan speaks so swiftly, but he understands their meaning. He understands what they said.

"You think you know me," he says.

"I do," Raylan says. "I do know you."

He frowns and thinks more of darkness. He waits. He can't quite--

"Another time, we walked up the hill together," Raylan says. 

He doesn't have to move now. He shifts. He listens. 

Raylan means to say something else, but he loses his nerve. He says, "Lots of times. We walked up the hill. In the summer. After shift. We went swimming down at the old quarry. We fished there in the morning if we stayed out ‘til the sun came up. You fell asleep right next to me.”

“And you’re my tail?”

Raylan shifts like he wants to say no. He’s not. He says, “Come with us.” 

This is not the pattern. This is not what they said.

He’s going to lose his grip and his grip is something he needs to hold on to. He moves forward, fast.

The sniper spooks. “Raylan,” he cries.

“Don’t,” Raylan says, loud. He’s close to Raylan now. Raylan yells in his ear, “ _Don’t_.”

The sniper doesn’t shoot. 

He thrusts the butt of the sniper’s weapon into his face and he’s down. He swings the rifle around and takes out the man. Raylan.

He takes Raylan’s car, with Raylan in it. He drives up the hill to a place where there are trailers. They are rundown and dingy and the one he picks has a girl passed out in it. He carries her to another trailer and tells the girl who answers to lock the door behind her. He tells her with Raylan’s gun.

Raylan’s gun is a law enforcement glock. Raylan wears a Marshal’s badge and an old fashioned stetson. He has him in the trailer now. He’s cuffed him to the bed, sitting on the floor. He watches him.

He is breathing steadily, eyes closed, slumped forward. There is a cut bleeding from his lip and a bruise blooming on his brow. Raylan groans. 

He watches and thinks of darkness again and a rumbling.

 

Raylan woke to the thought that he should have known. His eyes opened and they focused on Boyd’s impassive expression. There was only a hint of a question in his eyes. The rest of him was utterly still.

Raylan was on the floor, in a whore’s trailer, cuffed to her bed. His arm was sore from being held up in the air. His head was sore from being viciously bludgeoned by Tim’s rifle.

“My partner?” he asked, voice tired.

Boyd blinked, confused for a moment, as if he’d forgotten. His eyes flickered an annoyance, like he thought he should be the one asking questions. He was crouching on the floor, not four feet from Raylan. “I left him where he fell. It’s you I… want to speak to.”

Raylan frowned at the way he said “want,” as if it were a word he was unfamiliar with.

“What do you want to know?”

Boyd’s eyes widened, as if he hadn’t been expecting that question either, or he’d somehow avoided thinking about it at all.

“I’m so sorry for what they’ve done to you, my friend,” Raylan whispered, bowing his head.

But it wasn’t the sympathy that Boyd latched onto. He moved forward slightly. “You said that you knew me, not that we were friends.”

Raylan looked up. “Do you feel like we’re friends?”

He’d forgotten how green Boyd’s eyes were. They searched Raylan’s and he didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, he said, slow enough Raylan thought it was a lie, “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

Boyd’s lips quirked slightly at the corner, the first sign Raylan had seen of his old, wry humor. “Not much,” he said. “But, unless you’re lying, I know you can tell me my name.”

Raylan never understood this, how his life worked. “You know they took it away from you? And you aren’t angry?”

“I’ll be more angry if you hold off telling me any longer,” he snapped back, then looked bewildered for a moment, as if he felt whatever banter they had going was unnatural to him. He frowned and said, in a smaller voice, “I don’t know why I should believe you anyway.” He said that like a lie too.

“But you want to,” Raylan told him. “Why?”

Boyd frowned even more deeply. He leaned even more forward. “I know your white parts,” he said. “They’re… real. They’re real.” He sat back then and cradled his head in his hands. All at once, he looked lost. “This isn’t the pattern,” he murmured, casting his eye around the trailer. “Where is the table?”

“Boyd,” Raylan said quickly and his attention snapped back. “Boyd Crowder is your name.”

Boyd’s pupils dilated as they had when Raylan said his name before. He pitched forward for a quick moment, but caught himself, stumbling into Raylan, who reached out for him with his free hand. Boyd flinched at the contact, but Raylan couldn’t bear to let go once his fingers brushed Boyd’s dirt smudged face. His skin was damp with sweat and he shivered.

“Tell me something else,” Boyd said.

Raylan barely had to think about it. The words were on his lips before he could think about the right way to say them. “You didn’t even ask me. It was under the lights at the ball field at Evarts--the high school. We weren’t supposed to be there at night. You didn’t even ask, Boyd. And I didn’t know what you’d done until your lips were on mine.”

Boyd’s eyes were wide, they dipped fast to Raylan’s mouth and then rose again. “What did I do?”

“You made me love you,” Raylan said. 

“Can’t love a ghost,” Boyd whispered. “Something _else_.”

“You want something, Boyd Crowder, you don’t let nobody stop you.”

Boyd didn’t answer, didn’t ask again. He stilled in Raylan’s grip, his eyes rolling in challenge. He heard the truth in those words.

“What do you want now, Boyd?” 

Raylan would give him whatever he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Fred Atwood is an OC I've used before. He first makes an appearance in [A Pale Margin](http://archiveofourown.org/works/595526). I love him. I'll probably use him whenever I need a shady but good-hearted government guy in the future.


End file.
